The main difference between theatre music and music for film or games or festivals isn’t the technology or the venue, it’s the fact that theatre is performed for a live and responsive audience. It may not seem like this would affect sound and music, but coping with audience reaction is a vital part of balancing and cuing music and sound. For… Continue reading On Audiences
Tag: music
Sunday Silliness: Musical Appreciation
I heard this years ago on an old cassette tape that someone gave me as a birthday present, and it just blew me away. It is so silly, and so unusual, but still has an incredibly clever musicological streak running through it. Perhaps some of it is lost on me due to my lack of… Continue reading Sunday Silliness: Musical Appreciation
Around the Web: Arranging, Editing, and Rehearsal
A few links gathered from around the web. This week we have a couple of useful tutorials in sound mixing and MIDI orchestration. Although written with games, films or album release, these techniques are equally applicable for theatrical work. I’ve also linked to an excellent post by composer John Adams on taking your compositions into the… Continue reading Around the Web: Arranging, Editing, and Rehearsal
Norman O’Neill – Music to Stage Plays
This is a wonderful old article (it was published in the proceedings of the Royal Musical Association in 1910) which lays out the land for the traditional method of presenting music to a stage play. Norman O’Neill was a composer who wrote prolifically for the theatre, and these musings are the product of an expert… Continue reading Norman O’Neill – Music to Stage Plays
The Purposes of Theatrical Music
Music in a play (or to a lesser extent a musical) serves a very different purpose to music in a film or at a concert. In fact, it has a variety of purposes depending on the play that it is part of. I have based these purposes on the great book Sound and Music for the Theatre: The… Continue reading The Purposes of Theatrical Music